WBC Brawl Caused By Written Rule That Flies In The Face of Baseball's…

Baseball, am I right? The cause of yesterday's brawl between Mexico and Canada is being laid at the feet of the tournament's tie-breaking procedure, specifically run differential. Because of the rules, as Canada manager Ernie Whitt said, the game is always played as though it's 0-0. So when Canada was bunting with a…

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The 11th Pick In The MLB Player Draft Is Cursed, According To Science

In a perfect world, the first person selected in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft every year would be the best performing player from that crop. The second player would perform slightly below that, and so on and so forth. Of course, it doesn't work that way. For every Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex…

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Baseball's Unwritten Rules, Uncovered After 26 Years

A few weeks ago, I found myself in Austin and happened upon one of these flea market-type warehouses. It's like a ginormous, impersonal yard sale: People come with their stuff, set it up in their little station, put a price tag on everything, and hope it eventually sells. As it turns out, one of these dealers had an…

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Tony La Russa's Tortured, Petulant Justification For Plunking Ryan…

You can watch Tony La Russa try and fail to justify himself — he cycles through logical fallacies as if they were middle relievers in a 5-4 ballgame against the Reds — or you can watch young Mack Scocca-Ho capture the essence of La Russa's monologue in the video above.

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Dallas Braden's Dumb Feud With A-Rod Manages To Get Dumber

The A's lefthander took exception a few weeks ago when A-Rod ran across the mound, a violation of one of a thousand unwritten rules in baseball that remain unwritten for the simple reason that they're stupid. And we're still talking about it.

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Enough, Already, With The "Unwritten Rules" Of Baseball

brawlin.jpgGoose Gossage says you can't show joy when you do something positive. You can't bunt to end a no-hitter. If their guy throws even close to your guy, you have to throw closer to his guy. In the fourth inning, everyone has to do an Indonesian Dance Of Skulls before tapping his left ear twice. These "unwritten rules" of…

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